Rating: 
Summary: Great technical info, confusing and disjointed writing
Review: A great addition to your flash library, but with a few caveats....First off, this book covers Flash 5, not MX, but most of the logic applies. Second, I am not a newbie to reading technical documentation...I am a software engineer. While the coverage of the technology is very good in this book, the coverage of technique and the process are often hand-waved. You will have to read each chapter through once before turning on your computer and attempting to follow the process. If it were not for the repeated back-tracking and "where did this come from?" feeling while going though the projects, I'd give this book a 5 star rating for understanding Object oriented ActionScripting and XML in Flash as well as integrating Flash with other technologies such as PHP. Also note, when you are done with this book you should revisit the projects after reading up on the new features of Flash MX, as some aspects are streamlined. Not a criticism of the book, just a note to potential readers.
Rating:
Summary: Great technical info, confusing and disjointed writing
Review: A great addition to your flash library, but with a few caveats.... First off, this book covers Flash 5, not MX, but most of the logic applies. Second, I am not a newbie to reading technical documentation...I am a software engineer. While the coverage of the technology is very good in this book, the coverage of technique and the process are often hand-waved. You will have to read each chapter through once before turning on your computer and attempting to follow the process. If it were not for the repeated back-tracking and "where did this come from?" feeling while going though the projects, I'd give this book a 5 star rating for understanding Object oriented ActionScripting and XML in Flash as well as integrating Flash with other technologies such as PHP. Also note, when you are done with this book you should revisit the projects after reading up on the new features of Flash MX, as some aspects are streamlined. Not a criticism of the book, just a note to potential readers.
Rating: 
Summary: Difficult to use
Review: Although this book provides an OK overview of the technology, the code examples are not shown in full context, and the downloadable .fla's are diffucult first to even find of the web, and the secondly not extremely useful. Bottom line is there are better XML Flash books out there.
Rating: 
Summary: Clear and easy to understand.
Review: Authors have deep understanding of the subject, which is
eveident in their clear and simple way of explaining things.
Rating:
Summary: oh please
Review: Did you actually look inside the book? I don't know, what is up with the fact that a Flash and XML book (which has the guts to use a 'developers guide' in it's name) uses something completely useless as a multiple choice quiz, as the tutorial. Idon't know, I really don't see the benefit. I design web-pages and applications. And I don't think I was ever this insulted afte spending a good chunk of money on a book.... Ok get the book to learn (with your eyes trying to seperate the code examples from the explanations, and your left, creative, part of your brain imagining what might be the rest of the code, that is not part of the screenshot....) I don't know, give me Flash/XML book where we build something usefull...not quiz like in this book, or a bogus Tarot Application...yeah Friends of Ed I'm looking your way!
Rating:
Summary: review
Review: great book for beginners of XML and Flash. Amazing scope to bring beginner Flashers up to speed and then throw in the basics of XML. Good book for beginners and intermediate. Cover the Dom object as handled in Flash. VB and Javacript programmer who didn't know Flash could walk into these.
Rating:
Summary: Mixed review
Review: I bought this book just by looking at the first few chapters. I liked the sort of pacing that the authors offered. HOWEVER, upon reading further (beginning from around Chapter 7 onwards) I began having difficulties with the exercises and the ideas. (1) It seems like it's broken up in some parts and it's hard to follow the code. You don't know where to put the code; on a movieclip, on the timeline or in a nested clip.
(2) The code in the book contain errors that would be excusable if they had a decent errata on the website. The website does not have this. The forum doesn't even work. I'm mixed. The authors are very good in Object Oriented Programming (OOP) but "ok" to "poor" in teaching these ideas. I bought it. It's not worth every dime, but it'll be on my shelf until someone agrees to pay half of what I paid.
Rating:
Summary: Misleading Format
Review: I bought this book thinking it would be a great resource for developing Flash applications with XML data. Turns out, it's only good at taking up space on my bookshelf. The entire book is one long boring case study of some stupid quiz application. The methods used are hardly applicable to other applications and I have had to resort to other sources for information. I would not recommend this book to anyone.
Rating:
Summary: Waste of a day
Review: I gave this one star only for the beginning of the XML portion. It started out great and made alot of sense. By page 118 I wanted to slam my head into the wall. I must have about 100 Flash/PHP/mySQL etc books and I know how to follow examples. After struggling with this book, my quest for learning has now extended to building myself a Kevorkian machine. I'm sorry fellas, I REALLY wanted to like this book.
Rating:
Summary: Waste of a day
Review: I gave this one star only for the beginning of the XML portion. It started out great and made alot of sense. By page 118 I wanted to slam my head into the wall. I must have about 100 Flash/PHP/mySQL etc books and I know how to follow examples. After struggling with this book, my quest for learning has now extended to building myself a Kevorkian machine. I'm sorry fellas, I REALLY wanted to like this book.
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